Crystal Gorge: Book Three of the Dreamers

by Eddings, Leigh;Eddings, David

  Andar looked around, and his mind shuddered back from an ugly possibility. “Something like that would have taken centuries, Danal, and what purpose would it have served?”

  “A temple built on high ground would be a bit more impressive than one on flat, coastal ground, and impressing people is very important to Veltan’s older sister, I’ve noticed.”

  “I think you gentlemen may be overlooking something,” Padan said then. “If Lady Aracia wants something to happen, it probably will happen. All she’d have had to do was to say, ‘Rise up,’ and the ground would have been tickled to death to obey her.”

  “Maybe,” Danal said a bit dubiously, “but if some of the things I’ve heard came even close to being the truth, fully half of the people in this part of the Land of Dhrall are priests, and taking on a project like building a mound that’s several miles across would have given them something to do in their spare time.”

  “Close up, gentlemen,” Commander Narasan told them. “Let’s at least try to look military.”

  So far as Andar could tell, the town that appeared to have grown up around Aracia’s temple was the closest thing to a city in the entire Land of Dhrall. The buildings had white-plastered walls and red tile roofs, and the streets were paved.

  The temple rose up from the top of the mound, of course, and there were tall spires—probably decorative—reaching high up into the air. It seemed grossly overdone to Andar, but he realized that Aracia needed something like this. There had been more than a few hints during the campaign in Veltan’s Domain that Aracia deeply resented her older brother’s status as the highest-ranking god in the Land of Dhrall, and her ostentatious temple here was little more than a form of self-aggrandizement. It was rather sad, but not really all that uncommon.

  The steps leading up to the temple were wide, and the massive doors were sheathed with what appeared to be gold. That took ostentation out to the far end, Andar concluded.

  The stout orator who’d spoken to them in the harbor was waiting at the door, and he unleashed his vocabulary again as he greeted them.

  Andar chose not to listen.

  It took them quite some time to reach the central room of the temple, which did not even remotely resemble a Trogite convenium, since the central feature was a throne rather than an altar. That was one advantage the Dhralls had that the Trogites did not. They knew what their gods looked like, since they were usually present in the immediate vicinity.

  Andar was fairly sure that neither Zelana nor Veltan would have enjoyed all the adoration Aracia’s priesthood kept shoveling all over their goddess, but Aracia seemed to revel in the long, tiresome speeches.

  Commander Narasan nudged Andar, and the two of them drifted on to the back of the ornate throne-room. “I’d say that they’re just getting warmed up,” Narasan said quietly, “so this will probably take most of the day. Why don’t you and Danal go drift around this town and take a look at things? What we really need to know is whether this place is at all defensible. I’m having some serious doubts about that. Why would anybody in his—or her—right mind build a city and then neglect to build a wall?”

  “I wouldn’t say that ‘right mind’ is an applicable term, Commander,” Andar replied. “It looks to me like our esteemed employer doesn’t have a very firm grip on reality. I’ll have a look around, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up too high, Commander. These people probably don’t even know what the word ‘war’ means.”

  “You could be right, Andar,” Narasan conceded, “but go have a look, and talk with the locals. We need to know if the people of Aracia’s Domain have anything at all resembling an army. If the bug-people do decide to come this way, we’re going to have to hold them off—at least until Sorgan can get here, and that might take a while.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out, Commander, but I’m not very optimistic.”

  3

  Andar and Brigadier Danal quietly left Aracia’s throne-room and went on out of the temple. “That fat one who makes long, windy speeches is called the ‘Takal of Aracia,’” Danal advised his friend.

  “How did you find that out?”

  Danal shrugged. “I asked a young fellow who was off to one side,” he replied. “He told me that he only recently joined the priesthood, and he was trying his best to impress me. You know how novices are. They’ll talk forever if you give them half a chance. Anyway, if I understood him correctly, ‘Takal’ is something on the order of what the Trogite Church calls ‘the Naos’—except that he has four wives, and that would send the Amarite priesthood right up the walls.”

  “It would disturb them a bit, I’d imagine,” Andar agreed. “Did the young fellow give you that high priest’s name?”

  “Bersla, I think was the name he mentioned. The young fellow was talking so fast that I had a little trouble keeping up with him. He told me that the fat one was rich, but I’m not sure just how a man can be ‘rich’ in a land without money. For all I know, it could be a reference to the size of his belly.”

  They split up after they’d left the temple grounds, and Andar went on out to the western edge of the city. His uniform drew many puzzled looks, and the natives tried to avoid him for some reason. He did manage to get a few answers from a couple of them, though, but the answers weren’t very clear. When he said “wall,” the local people seemed to think he meant the side of a house. It was quite obvious that the concept of a protective wall surrounding the city was completely alien to them, and most of them, it appeared, had never heard the word “war” before.

  He methodically went on around the outskirts of the town, asking each native willing to speak with him the same questions. When he reached the beach again, Danal was waiting for him. “There’s not one tavern in the entire town,” Danal complained. “When I asked them where I should go if I wanted something to drink, they kept pointing at the wells. Evidently, water’s the only thing they drink.”

  “Their religion might have something to do with that,” Andar suggested. “Their god is a woman, and women have strange ideas sometimes. Were you able to find out anything about this ‘barter economy’ business?”

  “Not much that made any sense. I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think they use fruit or grain when they want to buy something—so many apples for a yard of wool and that sort of thing. There’s quite a bit of haggling going on in those shops. Did you happen to come across anybody who understood what you meant when you asked them about a wall?”

  “They all seemed to think I was talking about house walls,” Andar replied. “The notion of a stand-alone wall doesn’t seem to have occurred to any of them. Let’s face it, Danal, these are very primitive people. The only metal most of them have encountered is gold, and they use gold for ornaments, not for money.”

  “Pitiful,” Danal said. “Have we seen enough yet?”

  “I think we’ve covered just about everything the commander wants to know about.”

  “Let’s go on back to the temple, then.”

  “Must we?” Danal replied plaintively.

  Bersla, the fat high priest of the temple, was orating again, and Lady Aracia had a dreamy sort of look on her face as she sat on her throne.

  Andar and Danal joined Commander Narasan and the warrior queen.

  “Any luck?” Narasan asked them quietly.

  “I wouldn’t really get my hopes up, sir,” Danal replied. He glanced around at the nearby priests. “Do you think Aracia would be offended if we went outside for a breath of fresh air—or something? There are some things you should know, and I don’t think the priesthood there would be very happy if any of them overheard our reports.”

  “I don’t imagine she’ll even notice if we leave,” Narasan replied. He snapped his fingers, and Padan, who was standing nearby, looked over at them. Narasan gestured toward the door at the far side of Aracia’s throne-room, and Padan joined them as they moved toward the main door of the temple. “What’s afoot?” he asked quietly.

  “Let’s hold off until we get outs
ide,” Narasan replied. “I don’t think we want the natives to hear us.”

  They moved rather casually through the crowd of overdressed priests and then went on outside, with the warrior queen Trenicia close behind.

  “What did you find out, Andar?” Narasan asked when they went out through the golden doors.

  “There’s nothing at all even remotely resembling any kind of defenses, sir,” Andar replied, “and the local citizens don’t seem to understand the meaning of the word ‘wall.’ If we want a wall, we’ll have to build it ourselves. The wall around the temple itself is no more than a decoration. The way things stand right now, I’d say that ‘Holy City’ is completely indefensible.”

  “Why bother?” Padan asked. “I’d say that ‘Holy City’ isn’t really worth the trouble. What we really need right now is another one of those ‘lumpy maps.’ If we can pinpoint the most probable route the bug-people will take when they invade, we should be able to stop them before they reach open country. Once they spread out on the farmland, we’ll have lost the war.”

  “That does make sense, Commander,” Andar agreed. “If we can find a good place to build a fort that the bug-people can’t get past, we’ll win this war.”

  “I know,” Narasan replied glumly, “but ‘Holy Aracia’ wants us to concentrate on defending ‘Holy Temple.’ It’s the only thing that’s the least bit important to her, and she wants to have multitudes of soldiers right here where she can see them. Did either of you come across anything at all like a local army—something on the order of those farmers in Veltan’s Domain?”

  “They don’t even have police here, Commander,” Danal said, “and as close as I was able to determine, the word ‘weapon’ is beyond their understanding.”

  “I’m not sure if this would work, Commander,” Andar said, “but as soon as we can determine the most probable route for the bug-people invasion, maybe we should start waving the term ‘protective wall’ around. Then we tell ‘Holy Aracia’ and ‘Fat High Priest’ that bricks made of clay and straw wouldn’t do the job. We’ll need rocks, and from what I’ve seen, rocks are very rare in this coastal region. If we put a couple thousand men to work carrying rocks here from the mountains off to the west, it might persuade the lady who hired us that we’re making preparations to build a protective wall around her temple. That might keep her happy, and then she’ll be able to concentrate on being adored while we concentrate on building a real wall where we’re going to need one.”

  “This one is very clever, Narasan,” Trenicia observed. “The one who concentrates on listening to speeches isn’t going to pay too much attention to the details, and as long as the pile of rocks near her temple keeps growing, she’ll relax and listen to more speeches while you and your men do what really needs to be done.”

  “The first thing we need, though, is a map,” Padan insisted, “and I’m not sure if our employer has ever taken the trouble to even look at the rest of her Domain. Being adored is evidently a full-time job.”

  They had to wait until suppertime before they could speak with Lady Aracia, of course. Takal Bersla filled the entire afternoon with adoration, but eating was probably even more important for him.

  Aracia, of course, remained on her throne, most probably impatient for the adoration to resume.

  “We need to talk, Lady Aracia,” Commander Narasan said as soon as Bersla had left.

  “Is it important?” Aracia demanded.

  “Extremely important, My Lady,” Narasan replied. “If I’m going to defend your part of the Land of Dhrall, I’ll need a map. I must know what the ground looks like before I can make any decisions.”

  “It’s fairly flat near the coast,” she replied almost indifferently. “Then the foothills begin to emerge off to the west. Then the mountains rise up even higher to separate my Domain from the Wasteland. That’s about it, Commander.”

  “Details, Lady Aracia,” Narasan insisted. “I can’t make any plans without details. I’m quite sure that we’re going to need one of those ‘lumpy maps’ that have been so useful in the past two wars.”

  “We’ll talk about this some other time, Commander,” she replied. “My Takal will be coming back soon, and I’m sure he has more to say to me.”

  “He can wait,” Narasan said bluntly. “I can’t. Let me put it to you in simpler terms, Lady Aracia. If I don’t have a map of your Domain by tomorrow morning, I’ll give all those pretty gold blocks back to you and take my army back home.”

  “You wouldn’t!” she exclaimed, the imperious expression sliding off her face.

  “Try me,” Narasan said bluntly.

  Takal Bersla appeared to be seriously discontented the following morning, quite probably because his after-dinner oration had been canceled somewhat abruptly by divine Aracia. It was very likely that his discontent had been elevated by his discovery that his luxurious “contemplation chamber” had been usurped, and that it now had a lumpy floor.

  “Our defenders required a map of my Domain, my devoted Takal,” Aracia explained. “The map, of necessity, is quite large, so we needed a sizeable room.”

  “What is a ‘map,’ most holy?” Bersla demanded.

  “A picture of the ground,” Aracia explained. “Our friends wanted to study the shape of my Domain so that they will be able to defend it when the creatures of the Wasteland attack us.”

  “It is the temple that must be defended, holy Aracia. The empty ground outside the temple is not significant.”

  Andar was startled by Bersla’s lack of understanding, but he approached the fat man rather carefully. “I’m just guessing here,” he said, “but I gather that your family has served holy Aracia for many generations.”

  “We have served in her temple for centuries,” Bersla declared with some pride.

  “Ah,” Andar said. “That might explain why you’ve overlooked something rather important.”

  “I overlook very little, outlander.”

  “Good. Now tell me which part of the temple you’ll eat when the supply of food runs out.”

  “There’s always food here. It’s the primary obligation of the commoners to provide food for the priesthood.”

  “But if they don’t have any food to give you, there won’t be anything here for you to eat, will there? If you think about that just a bit, I’m sure you’ll realize that the farmland out there is much more important than this temple.”

  “How dare you?” Bersla flared.

  “Truth sometimes has a very bad taste,” Andar said. “How many times a day do you eat?”

  “Thrice, of course. All people eat three times a day.”

  “And where does the food you eat come from?”

  “Well, the farms, I suppose, but there are many farms in holy Aracia’s Domain. We’ll always have food.”

  “Not if we don’t stop the invasion of the bug-people, you won’t. The bug-people eat everything—vegetables, fruit, meat-animals, trees, and the farmers themselves. Once the bug-people start eating, it won’t be long before everything out there will be gone. That’s when you and the other priests here in this holy temple will begin to starve to death. I’ve been told by people who know about such things as the process of starvation that it would probably take a man of your girth about three months to die, and it’s likely to be the worst three months of your entire life. You’ll have to be very watchful after the supply of food runs out, because your fellow priests are very likely to decide that a plump fellow like you might taste very good after they’ve gone without food for a few weeks.”

  “That’s monstrous!” Bersla exclaimed.

  “I know, but it does happen in these situations. Now, then, if your fellow priests don’t kill you and eat you, your body will begin to absorb your flesh. In a certain sense, you’ll be eating yourself, and your skin will start to sag like a wet blanket. I wouldn’t worry too much, though, because after the bug-people have eaten everything out in the farmland, they’ll come here, and then they’ll eat you. You should probably keep
a nice sharp knife handy so that you can kill yourself before the bugs arrive. Bugs don’t seem to think it’s necessary to kill something before they eat it, and being eaten alive would probably be even worse than dying of starvation. If you’d like, I’ll show you exactly where to drive in your knife to kill yourself quickly with the least amount of pain. Or maybe you could hide yourself long enough to finish starving to death before the bugs find you. But make no mistake, great priest, when the food runs out, you will die—one way or another.”

  Bersla was staring at Andar with a look of sheer horror, and Aracia’s expression was much the same. “He’s just making this up, isn’t he, Narasan?” she demanded.

  “Actually, I think he put it rather mildly, Lady Aracia,” Narasan replied. “When famine strikes, horrors beyond imagination begin to crop up. Starvation is even worse than a war, and when a really severe famine breaks out, everybody dies—eventually—and the longer people live, the more they suffer. Now that you understand what’s likely to happen here, maybe we should talk about how we’re going to prevent it. I’d say that we should concentrate on keeping the bug-people out of your Domain. Once they come down out of the mountains and spread out, we’ll have lost this war, and all of your people will become nothing more than something the bugs will have for lunch.”

  THE NORTH COUNTRY

  1

  At first light Captain Hook-Beak rowed a skiff across the harbor near Veltan’s house to speak with Narasan. Rabbit was standing near the bow of the Seagull when his young Trogite friend Keselo came out on deck. “Where’s your captain going?” he asked.

  “He wants to get a few things straightened out with your commander before we split up and sail off in different directions,” Rabbit replied. “We’re likely to be separated for a month or two, so the cap’n wants to be sure that we’ll all be ready if trouble breaks out, I guess.” He looked at Keselo. “Do you know very much about these horse-soldiers that everybody seems to be so excited about?” he asked.